“After three long years of rumors, Apple finally struck a deal with China Mobile,” Mukesh Baghel writes for The Motley Fool. “Rumors of a cheaper iPhone started circulating more than two years before Apple finally launched the iPhone 5c. Now there’s a new rumor, and when it materializes, it will have a bigger impact than the partnership with China Mobile or the iPhone 5c: the iWatch.”

“Speculation about the iWatch started gaining steam in early 2013, when both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is experimenting with iOS-based watches made of curved glass,” Baghel writes. “The rumors became hotter when Bloomberg reported that Apple had hired several new wearable computing experts to work on such a device. With 2014 well under way, that team is believed to have grown to at least 200 people, according to MobiHealthNews‘ Brian Dolan.”

“Investors tend to underestimate the potential of Apple’s new categories,” Baghel writes. “However, the iWatch has the potential to be a massive growth driver for Apple. Morgan Stanley projects that the iWatch will generate a whopping $17.5 billion in revenue in the first 12 months it’s on the market. This is more than what the iPhone, at $2.5 billion, and the iPad, at $13 billion, generated in their first 12 months on the shelves, combined.”

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27 Comments

With Google introducing Android Wearable for a smart watch platform, even more people and investors will be pushing Apple for a smart watch. I’m an Apple guy since 1982, but Apple isn’t on the cutting edge anymore. Their products may be better design – wise when they get to market, but they seem to be an eternity (in tech time) being everyone these days. Other tech companies are pushing the envelope and creating serious competition.

After 7 years of essentially the same ios and smaller screen I am enjoying life on my Note 3 and Android. Bigger screen and can be creative with my screens. Liking the Gear smart watch too. Are they both perfect, no. But it shows how healthy competition can be when companies work hard to get customers.

Forstall was a douche bag through in through who’s very presence was like a cancer on the executive team. With him at the helm we still wouldn’t have bigger screens. We don’t have larger screens still even in this day in age because Apple’s ideas of consumer needs/desires haven’t grown but very little in the years since the first iPhone was released. The market has changed, people have shifted from the masses being afraid of new technology and not understanding how to use it, much less utilize it in their everyday workflow. They shifted to ( thanks to the groundwork laid by Apple for first few iPhone/iOS releases) masses of people who not only understand smartphones and accompanying technology and are now ready to truly get more out it; and that’s where Apples ability to grow their own concepts comes into play. The iPhones screen size and simplicity were necessary 7 years ago… but we are now 7 years later and it’s time to rethink. They don’t seem willing to rethink… Iterate, yes; rethink, now. It’s telling when they have the lowest screen resolution in the market, with the smallest screen in the market, and not even the widest color gamut in the market but they still claim they have the best display in the market. It’s telling that 7 years after release, you still can’t put a shortcut on your home screen that goes directly to a file you are working on or a folder on your home screen with shortcuts to documents that actively working on. Anyhow, I digress. The masses aren’t as technology challenged as it once was (thanks to the revolution that Apple started); so Apple needs to make moves to keep up with the train that they themselves help build and put in motion. /rant

Long gone are the days where objective thinking and criticism are embraced. Now we have Android fans who can’t see past the shortcomings of their beloved open system and Apple fans who think every single move that Apple makes is a stroke of genius and even missteps (yup the most definitely happen with all companies including Apple) are still praised and all evidence of them being actual missteps are glazed over. No company is perfect, not even Apple (or Google for that matter). However if the fanboys keep spewing bile out of their mouths because their loyal are so deep that their emotional attachments are blinding them, then the very companies they are loyal to begin to suffer because they are the emperors and people like you my friend are the ‘shills’ who keep telling them how new their clothes are when on the contrary they are quite embarrassingly naked. /rant

Michael, grand sweeping criticisms don’t work. I’d actually have enjoyed it if YOU had used objective thinking and criticism, must like I enjoy sharing. But you didn’t. Who looks better ‘naked’ around here? Not the folks who blether on about Apple fanatics ‘spewing bile out of their mouths because blahblahblah’. I rarely see that among Apple fanatics either in the wild or here at MDN. Most of us around here are indeed Apple’s biggest critics when they pull blunders. Expect ‘spewing bile’ out of me when people post garbage around here, as you and the thread leader successfully have done.

IOW: I apparently am so interested in justice, sanity and facts that I just wasted a paragraph on you about same. I know full well you don’t actually care. Oh well.

Return to Apple when you’re interested in using gear from the people who invented your Samsung gear, as opposed to using ripoff gear from a company that slavishly copies others and can’t even come up with their own decent OS. Yes, I’m talking about Tizen.

There were MP3 players well before the first iPod, there were smartphones long before the iPhone, there were tablets for years before there was the iPad. Just because some smart watches have already come to market and not had any traction doesn’t mean Apple can’t do what it’s always done – perfect the technology and make it mainstream.

This is ridiculous speculation. How can anyone project Apple’s potential revenues with a new product without knowing what it will do, or how much it will cost? It’s almost as if the projector is making up a big number that will be impossible to meet, just to claim the product is a failure when this phony number isn’t met.

I, of course, am sick of all these marketing people writing about technology as if they have a clue what they’re talking about. That is the case with Motley Fool writers these days. What a shame that people get taken in by this invented rubbish they write.

Who says Apple has to be first? They weren’t first with the computer, input device, music player, etc. They take what’s out there and make it better (in most cases). Tablets were out there before the iPad. Did they sell well before the iPad? No. Once Apple found the magic formula, everyone emulated it, some down to the exact look of it. I hope Apple takes the time to do it right, make it look good and THEN bring it to market.

I expect Apple’s watch to re-define the category. It will be a health monitor and an extension of your iPhone. I also expect Samsung to completely re-make their version of the smart watch to match Apple’s as closely as possible, as fast as possible. Legal battles will follow and they’ll get a slap on the wrist (no pun intended) after years of making money off Apple’s IP.

I am so tired of reading trainings about this supposed next product announcement from Apple that endure to present this as particular kind of watch!!! Expending present watch auctions data is completely inappropriate to the probable of a wearable device that is a revolutionary leap forward in personal health and aptness monitoring along with simplifying payments, tickets , keyless security and other options a wrist worn device like this can create! The medical and suitability market possible alone is ENORMOUS for a device that is able to track television mix and examine heart, blood heaviness, glucose and personal activity and store it and potentially conduct it automatically to your Dr. This will upend the medical devices market and be a transformative event in human health care. Perhaps the best thing that container be done by anyone attempting to write around this unobserved product is to STOP CALLING IT A WATCH.